


Four Weddings and a Funeral (and then another wedding)

by florahart



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Alex cannot with royal protocols, M/M, Weddings, complicated blended families, expensive wedding cake, gay cowboy wedding invitations, royal heirs and the production thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 19:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: What it says on the tin: there are weddings, and a funeral, and Alex and Henry attend them.  :)





	Four Weddings and a Funeral (and then another wedding)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why this has no porn; however, it appears it does not. *shrug* BTW it's always okay to tell me if I have left typos that annoyed you or similar.
> 
> (Also, there is discussion in the funeral section of royal expectations regarding creating heirs and how that might suck if one had fertility struggles; if this will be ouchy for you to read I'm confident based on the source that you taking care of you is what Alex and Henry would both prefer.)

The first wedding, you know about.

_Everyone_ knows about it.

There was the champagne, and Henry's stupid face and, and _smug_ face and like, really impossibly _beautiful_, well, face, and then there was my shoe and a Texas-sized international-relations spectacle and sure, yeah, it all turned into the best punishment ever, but for a long time I wasn't sure Martha was ever going to forgive me about her monstrosity of a cake.

Y’all, come _on_ it's not like I said it was ugly or whatever, just, who spends an amount somewhere in the 60th percentile, give or take, of the gross annual income for American households on a cake?

No, I know. My parents did not grow up privileged, but I had the means to just up and fly to England on my own dime, repeatedly, at the age of twenty-one, for the extremely important reason of getting my dick sucked by a British royal, so like, I know, it's people in whatever my social _group_ is or something.

Still.

Also, I was being flippant, but it was, in fact, an extremely important reason, because the royal in question is so perfect I can't believe I ended up getting to keep him.

\-- 

I was and possibly still am surprised Shaan and Zahra not only allowed us to attend their wedding but actually invited us.

Probably there's a rule that if you know royal people you _have_ to, is all I can figure out, but H says that's only a suggestion and that beheadings for insulting monarchs stopped being a thing some time ago. But like, they both saw and heard and were affected by everything we did, including the aforementioned cake altercation and a year of resultant chaos, and still they let us come.

Both our households hire well.

It was very formal. No nerd references at all. Normal-sized cake for a couple hundred guests, which by the way even still apparently cost nearly twenty-five hundred dollars, which I know because my mother offered a funny-but-not-fake opinion regarding how if I break it, I buy it. Still, not $75K, just a median _month's_ American income because (?) wedding cake price-gouging is sanctioned by the mob? I mean, that's my best guess. I know a lot of semi-shady peeps because politics is a filthy dirty game, but my mom's mobster acquaintances, as she was the good-guys campaign, are thin on the ground.

So that was the second one. Wedding, I mean.

Blue flowers and crimson clothing (? I asked Nora, who said this is probably Shaan’s tradition but either way duh they can wear what they want for getting married Alex you should take notes) and lots of gold leaf and clean white accents on things, and Henry cried, and I was of course very stoic and manly.

Fuck you, manly men sometimes cry when women who have credibly threatened their own fiance's testicles over international waters on their behalf get married. This absolutely falls within the bounds of manliness. You can ask anyone.

Philip was also in attendance, stoically, because Shaan was part of the household for several years; I am assured that he was asked because of being royal. I feel this lends credence to my argument above, but evidently the rule structure is complex and the sort of thing with which one only becomes truly conversant over the course of a lifetime.

It so happens that's how long I have, so this is a schedule that will ultimately work for me despite that patience is not among my more impressive strengths.

It might not actually be among my strengths, period, but I am in a relationship with a prince and so impugning my awesomeness is not to be done. I’m almost sure that’s _also_ a rule.

\--

Dad has said for the last ten years that my mom was the love of his life and it's always been, like, this really settled thing? So I fully did not expect him to marry one of Reinhardt's staffers after a whirlwind thing only seven months after Mom's second inauguration. 

That's totally not a complaint. She's awesome, and also she is a whopping twelve years older than me and has three kids under the age of eight. By the way, the fact that this is true and she was working on the Hill while single-momming them? Yeah, I'm not planning on pissing her off, like, _ever_. People who wrangle small children on an unforgiving schedule, on a tiny budget, while extremely outnumbered, while also definitely of an age at which I cannot imagine myself managing this nonsense, have skills.

Not that I usually plan that sort of thing. The pissing people off. I mean, I'm _good_ at it, but that's not the same.

Her name is Elena. Dad doesn't see why I think this is funny, but come on. I guess if you're going to get married twice you should marry people with basically the same name, because then you cannot possibly fuck up and say your first wife's name to your second? I mean, not, like, during sex which by the way is not a topic I am spending any energy thinking about because hey love is great, sex is great, that's my dad? But like, some other time. 

(Elena _does_ think it's funny, because she is smart and sensible and keeps up with my dad, so it's all good. Plus she makes him happy, so I like her.)

June had already taken Leticia, who is seven and a half and was voluntarily reading Allende's _La Ciudad de las Bestias_ the first time we met, very under her wing by the time they tied the knot. Luca, her twin, and Mateo, who is "almost five," (he is four and seven months, but I super feel his need to round up) are less about the books and more about playing in dirt, so I bonded with them by showing them lacrosse moves. 

FYI, two little kids re-enacting their best one on one strategies in the aisle, complete with totally illegal cross checking and tackles and stomping on the flower petals recently scattered, while the priest is asking if anyone has a reason their mom and your dad should not get married, is apparently a reason for your mother to ask if you are ever going to learn about being presentable and your boyfriend's sister to laugh at you for days.

Henry smoothed things over by promising to teach them about polo, because it is civilized and because definitely someone would notice if horses were brought in to disrupt a ceremony and could head the whole thing off at the pass.

Other FYI, weird-entended-family Christmas, which now starts with Christmas Eve at Kensington with Bea (and Philip and Martha plus the rest of the royal fam), includes a red-eye to DC, and ends with small children whooping about stockings in the morning, is pretty great. Being a big brother is awesome, and Henry digs it, too.

\--

We were not exactly _invited_, when Liam and Spencer got hitched (no, seriously, hitched, that's what the invite June got said, with a picture of a lariat and a hitching post and, like, stirrups. It's Texas and they're feeling their oats).

(It said that too. Obviously I kept it; it's a work of fucking art. Henry absolutely cannot with the entire thing, which is among the reasons I absolutely _can_ because wow. But, I also reminded him that when he does the horse things (for polo, get your mind out of the gutter thank you) I do the drool things and honestly who are we to judge when that tack room is one of my fonder memories, so.)

Anyway. June got an invitation, and then Henry got a slightly hilarious phone call from Spencer, at work, in which he was confused by Texas idioms so frequently that he ended up just memorizing large parts of the conversation to ask me about later.

The upshot was, Spencer felt we should be invited, and Liam also felt we should but thought Spencer didn't actually want to invite us because I was a stupid asshat who hurt his honey by not noticing I was having actual sex with him for a year in our teens which even though we are okay now and he knows I was not being malicious, was sort of still a sore spot, except only sort of and not really, but Liam was trying to be loyal to Spencer over me, which by the way I approve of, and not sending anything directly, and counting on either June asking about it, or, I don’t know, fate?

Look, I am, demonstrably, a fucking _idiot_ about determining my own sexuality over the course of half a decade? And I'm kind of a mess as far as making the people around me crazy? But even I am better at protocol than that. 

Among other things, and this was not the top of the list at all but it was on the list, I didn't want him to think we thought we were, like, too good for his gay cowboy wedding? Plus I had every intention of inviting him to ours. Which will, to the distress of most, feature much less cowboy but still be gay. So, after a lot of practicing with H and June at not being a complete idiot on the phone his time, I called Liam back myself and we decided my extremely unsubtle security presence would probably be a giant pain in the ass for his logistics, but that I absolutely wanted to be there if for no other reason than to verify that Spencer will be great for him. 

Then he emailed me a contract requiring me to stay at least four times my height away from the cake table, because he is an asshole which is probably why we got along so well, and a digital copy of the invitation. 

On the digital one, the lariat twirls and is made of glitter. It’s awful and I love it. 

Henry said he needed to have a lie-down. He literally dragged David onto the couch to curl up at his feet for comfort.

\--

The funeral, okay, let me set the scene. First you’ll want to know that it turns out Martha is a nice person. A person I actually do want to know. This was a surprise for me, because so far Philip has been and remains only about ten percent removed from the same stuffy extreme dickbutt he was in the first place. Shut up, dickbutt is a valid description. Anyway. But so Martha is kind of great, and I like her. Also, even though she never volunteers opinions in any setting that could possibly be construed as public, she knows _actually more_ about the history of the royal family and its traditions than Henry does, and she and I have taken to sharing secret winks about it sometimes.

Not in public, because then the fucking _Mail_ would probably insinuate something terrible about my brown bisexual ass and my boyfriend’s brother’s wife (actually, no, they'd straight-up say it, in some cleverly dreadful way that just barely keeps them on the right side of libel), and Henry does not need the stress of dealing with my being the defendant in a public UK murder trial.

Anyway, the funeral.

It was supposed to be the queen. The next funeral we'd need to go to. Or I mean, the _first_ one that _we_, me-and-H-the-couple, would, but you know what I mean, it's another one of those things you do again for the first time once you're in a relationship. Anyway. The queen. She's a million years old and her overall opinion about me, among other things, is a lot more pleistocene than postmodern. However, I am ...happy? Ish? To report that she is still alive and kicking.

No, it was Martha's grandmother, her mother's mother, whom she loved a lot, and because Philip is as previously mentioned a dickbutt, for some reason he had ideas, like, you know, Royal Protocol _Ideas_ about the appropriateness of her crying about it.

Evidently royal personages look somber and fold their hands and wear long classy coats that are never puffy and look right with their low-heeled pumps and just-below-the-knee skirts, but they do not present wet tears that look like water coming out of their eyes where anyone has a camera.

Which, and I don't really know if Philip has tumbled to this yet, is _everywhere_, because _the world is fucking full of cameras._ I mean, I know this because it was people with lenses that could probably catch a clear image of a wart on a bacteria at three hundred yards who outed my relationship, so basically he wanted Martha to just never at all have an emotion.

So Martha was upset and Philip was being Philip, and she came to hang out at our apartments for a little while while we were in London for a ceremony to do with some kind of cheese (?), during which we learned more about their procreation interests and activities than I actually wanted to know, but because my mother would maybe actually send her detail to murder me until dead if I ever, ever made a woman feel shittier than the rest of the world already does about her reproductive systems and behaviors, I listened.

Apparently making an heir is pretty much the first job of a new princess, _still_, which for fuck's sake he has two siblings and there are cousins and the peerage is not about to die out. Honestly. And the problem is, she is trying, and has been trying, and her body isn't having it but now it maybe is? and there was no way I was letting her try to be all stiff upper lip proper whatever the fuck about her grandmother while also struggling with the hormone nonsense of the stuff they're giving her to help her produce offspring that were now expected in I guess twenty-seven weeks..

So Philip was shocked as shit when Henry took him aside and explained in small words that his dickbuttery was showing again and that supporting one's pregnant wife is an extremely low bar for being a decent husband, royal or otherwise, and then we invited ourselves even though the protocol didn't require it and attended the funeral and sat behind Philip where she'd know we were present in support of her, specifically. 

I didn't know Lady Granthome-Collins, but I gather she was a teller of fantastical stories and a producer of excellent biscuits, and I can get behind that.

–

P.S.

I mean, us, obviously. That will be the fifth one, which I have been thinking of as "eventually" but which is actually totally soon. Next week soon. I am definitely not freaking out.

(I am freaking out.)

There are a LOT of people coming. I guess if one is an earl, count, duke, prince, minister, member of parliament, celebrity, and/or other UK citizen whose income exceeds about forty percent of the median, one is to be invited to a royal wedding, and then there's also the entire US side of the aisle. It's nuts.

N.U.T.S.

Christ. My personal preference would be for small and intimate, close family, close friends, one dog because obviously David should be there. My preference is not in keeping with tradition.

It's fine. Nora is totally (she says mostly, because she's pretending there are still weeks, but the calendar says time's up) done developing a whole system for managing the seating chart even though there are people on Henry's side who have a _lot_ of extremely opaque unstated but deeply important rules of arranging the importance of personages of importance, especially as related to the arrangement of teenaged gay paramours and their husbands, queer besties with whom one used to occasionally fake sex to bamboozle the press, boisterous brown stepfamilies and bosses and proteges, and security details who are also actually invited guests. All of whom are (gasp!) American.

Me, all I care about is, "do I get to marry Henry?" and since the yes in that is almost implicit in the existence of a wedding since I think a person can actually get shot or, like, drawn and quartered (or possibly punished with a fantastic relationship but I feel like that was a one-time thing) for fucking up a royal wedding so probably there will be no leaving of anyone at any altars, I’m good. I'm not leaving him, and he upset centuries of tradition for me, and that's the main thing.

Still, there are spreadsheets, charts, swatches of cloth and paper and probably ribbons and I don't know what else, tastings, menus, samples of whatever we call it instead of swag when it's royal, and an enormous cake that evidently no one is allowed to discuss with me any more because three little times I complained about the exorbitant cost, and that was enough for the entire household to change the subject.

What, I just can't get over the whole thing, and yes, I know, expensive cake brought me my forever guy so I should forgive it, but I choose to assume destiny would have brought us together either way so I do not owe the cake. I do not.

Also, Martha will be just past the eight-month mark by the day-of, but since they weren't telling anyone until she was in the second trimester this time, we were already almost a year into the planning by then because even gay royal weddings require a lot of protocols and procedures. She was going to send her excuses so she wouldn't be huge and awkward and possibly disruptive, but fuck 100% of that, Amy volunteered to hang out with her and stage a discreet exit if necessary and she has seen Amy's discreet royal-maneuvering skills, so she agreed to come. This is good, since I was prepared to stand on principle and delay until she was able to attend because family is fucking important, but I really didn't want to have to. I want to marry Henry.

But I told her if her water breaks and she upstages us it will be super fair and it'll just be a bigger party, the more the merrier. She thought I was kidding, but I was not. I'm nothing if not fair-minded.

Anyway, there's a lot of protocol and several problems to work out, and my mother did have to send out for some pamphlets for Nora to work from. But this time next week, I'll be a Claremont-Diaz-Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor. At least it's alphabetical? No, obviously we have to figure out what to do with the name, but my tradition is in conflict with his, and there are good reasons for all the pieces. It might be time to come up with some new traditions? Well, we have a week and a lifetime to work it all out.


End file.
